Did Catherine know who JTR was???

[Monty]

tnb

Monty,

Fair point. Whoops! Yes, assuming Kate still had enough of the boots money left to afford the halfpenny fare each way, we can take off roughly 8-10 minutes each way if she used the Tower Subway. Personally I still feel that as she had lied to Kelly about visiting her daughter before that she may have been doing the same again, but your addition at least makes it a good deal more feasible that she may have been telling the truth on this occasion.

That is an even better point.

I feel she would sooner walk the longer way as opposed to fork out the fare.

Monty

[tnb]

Monty,

Fair point. Whoops! Yes, assuming Kate still had enough of the boots money left to afford the halfpenny fare each way, we can take off roughly 8-10 minutes each way if she used the Tower Subway. Personally I still feel that as she had lied to Kelly about visiting her daughter before that she may have been doing the same again, but your addition at least makes it a good deal more feasible that she may have been telling the truth on this occasion.


As regards the drinks business, I think Kelly was playing a bit of a clever game at the inquest with regards to Eddowes and their relationship, in terms of playing off what he said (positive) against what he didn't quite say (not so). For example, he says that she drunk only occasionally and never to excess, while he must have known that would be contradicted (as it was, most notably by Annie) and also reports little surprise or even concern when he was told about her arrest. He uses the loaded wording 'walking the streets' - in the first instance ONLY in relation to Kate - but then seemingly corrects himself by saying he only meant that if they didn't have a bed they would have to walk about all night. Now, plenty of people did have to do just that, as it was illegal to sleep on the streets at night, and Kelly was not an educated man - but this is not just a slip of the tongue. Kelly more than a lot of people would have known the connotations of that phrase, as would the jury, and such impressions stick. He then goes on to say that he knew of no-one who could have been buying her drinks, which coming after that inflammatory phrase especially would have raised the obvious question ''why would a stranger buy her drinks'' and the all-too-obvious answer.

To my mind, Kelly was concerned as to what might be revealed about their relationship (he was cagey about the row 'a long time ago - some months ago') and was getting his defence in first, whilst also trying to appear in a favourable light himself - ''If we had problems it was nothing to do with me, she was a drunk and an occasional prostitute. Not that I said that, I'm a gentleman, see?''

Whether that was the truth, or not, is another matter entirely.

Personally I do not think Kelly was party to the pawning or that he had any idea where Kate was or what she was up to for most of Saturday, but that is likely just me. As I say, I may elaborate further after some more research.

[Addy]

Hi tnb,

I agree with you that Eddowes didn't go to see her daughter, she probably knew already she had moved. Perhaps she had found someone else to give her money (a sister or other relative?) that Kelly did not particularly like? So she kept things silent. And there is the obvious explanation, she went to "earn" it in the streets. However, whatever happened near Mitre Square, I don't think that is what she was doing that afternoon.

Indeed, she must have gotten money from somewhere, or someone else was paying for her drinks that afternoon.

Greetings,

Addy

[Monty]

Hey tnb

1) Geography. King Street, Bermondsey was just off New Road, which became the lower part of Tower Bridge Road around the time of the completion of Tower Bridge in 1894. Originally known as Bermondsey New Road, it ran from what is now the junction of Tower Bridge Road with Long Lane down to the New and Old Kent Roads. King Street was the second street on the right as you walked up New Road from the latter junction, roughly where Leroy Street is now. This map is from 1827:

http://users.bathspa.ac.uk/greenwood/map_g7u.html

and King Street can be seen roughly a quarter of the way down, in the centre.

Without Tower Bridge that's a steady 40-45 minute walk from Houndsditch, or in other words at least an hour and twenty-thirty minutes there and back, if Kelly meant Eddowes was going to meet him back where they had parted. Alternatively you can add another 10 minutes or so if she was going back to Flower and Dean Street to meet him.

Would The Thames Subway have any baring on that time?

Monty

[TomTomKent]

Wow, this is an interesting discussion! (and most of it way above my level I'm afraid).

I think it is possible that Catherine may have THOUGHT she knew who the Ripper was. After all, a lot of people THOUGHT they knew who the Ripper was. If her theory was correct or not, or indeed based on anything more than goissip and speculation, or the idea that "Such and Such looks strange" is another matter entirely.

In my experience, as soon as there is a high profile murder, kidnapping, or theft that makes page one of a newspaper, then somebody at work will "know" what "really" happened. why should folks of the time of JTR be any different?

[Phil Carter]

Hello Jon,

Many thanks for your kind comments. There are holes indeed. Let us hope one or two show possibilities.

best wishes

Phil

[Jon Guy]

Hello Phil

Firstly, let me say, you are absolutely correct, there are holes in some of the testimonies, which you have graciously presented to us in an interesting manner.

From one of the threads earlier, I presented the possibility why Kelly could easily have been out of the house around 12, and back again WITHOUT being noticed, by Wilkinson's own contradictory testimony.

Sorry, I have read it now!!
Cooney`s was a common lodging house, there were the other 98 lodgers, and restrictions on getting in and out, and someone in an office by the door. Not forgetting John Kelly was a regular who would have been missed (empty bed).

[Phil Carter]

Hi Phil



"Kelly went to bed at 10 o`clock on Saturday night, and witness was quite positive that he did not go out again" F.W.Wilkinson The Times Oct 5th.

Hello Jon,
Thanks for that reply,

From one of the threads earlier, I presented the possibility why Kelly could easily have been out of the house around 12, and back again WITHOUT being noticed, by Wilkinson's own contradictory testimony.

Hello tnb,

Many thanks for your kind words.

best wishes

Phil

[Jon Guy]

Hi Phil

We have seen that the evidence of the lodging house keeper allows for Kelly not being at the lodging house.

"Kelly went to bed at 10 o`clock on Saturday night, and witness was quite positive that he did not go out again" F.W.Wilkinson The Times Oct 5th.

[tnb]

Addy -

in fairness to Kelly, yes that was his story - 'all of it was spent in [sic] drink and food', which may seem pretty irresponsible to us but is actually not too far removed from what we know of the habits of many in the east end at the time (I suggest it may have been more of the former and less of the latter!) and indeed many alcoholics today.

As regards Kate going to see her daughter, her daughter (Annie Phillips) was called at the inquest and stated that she had not seen her mother for upwards of two years, she also doesn't quite say that her mother was in the habit of making a bit of a nuisance of herself by turning up and asking for money, and admits that she had relatively recently moved house and had deliberately withheld her new address from her mother. So whether that was indeed Kate's plan when she left Kelly in Houndsditch (if the event even occurred) the meeting never transpired. Kate may of course have gone to Bermondsey to find her daughter, and not found her, as the address Kelly gives for Annie is the wrong one - namely King Street, Bermondsey.

If we are taking Kelly's story (or at least this part of it) as true (big if) then two things strike me, personally:

1) Geography. King Street, Bermondsey was just off New Road, which became the lower part of Tower Bridge Road around the time of the completion of Tower Bridge in 1894. Originally known as Bermondsey New Road, it ran from what is now the junction of Tower Bridge Road with Long Lane down to the New and Old Kent Roads. King Street was the second street on the right as you walked up New Road from the latter junction, roughly where Leroy Street is now. This map is from 1827:

http://users.bathspa.ac.uk/greenwood/map_g7u.html

and King Street can be seen roughly a quarter of the way down, in the centre.

Without Tower Bridge that's a steady 40-45 minute walk from Houndsditch, or in other words at least an hour and twenty-thirty minutes there and back, if Kelly meant Eddowes was going to meet him back where they had parted. Alternatively you can add another 10 minutes or so if she was going back to Flower and Dean Street to meet him. As she gave herself a two hour window, (she told Kelly she would be back 'not after 4pm') that gives Kate between 10-40 minutes to 'find' the daughter she had not seen for a significant time, talk etc, proposition her for money, take her leave of her again and turn around to walk back towards Whitechapel. Does that seem a little tight to anyone else? Especially as Eddowes knew that she had actually not seen her daughter for over twice the amount of time that Kelly stated, and may have even suspected she had moved. Obviously it didn't happen, but it just seems an odd plan for Eddowes to come up with, as she must have had some idea of the timings involved. The inevitable question is why else would Kate want to give Kelly the impression that she was a good few miles out of Whitechapel for a couple of hours?

2) Kelly was under the impression that Kate had visited her daughter about a year ago; in actual fact they had not met for more than double that time. This raises three related questions - where was Kate sometime in 1887 when she seems to have told Kelly (falsely) that she was with her daughter? Why would she lie? And if she returned with money, where had it come from?

I actually wrote a very lengthy reply earlier after reviewing the inquest transcript which included these two exact points, but decided against taking up a massive chunk of boardspace at this moment - I may just submit it as a dissertation after some additional research and tidying up, we will see.

Without giving the rest of my thoughts, I do not want to take up too much more space - but I would just like to point out that I am not necesarrily suggesting Kate was lying to Kelly to go about some kind of secretive prostitution, which in this form may seem to be what I am hinting at; my hypothetical conclusion is actually quite different.

One last thing I must say though is a massive thankyou to Phil and, in abstentia, Simon, for a fascinating and thought-provoking read.

[Addy]

Correct me if I'm wrong please but I always thought Kelly and Eddowes used the money from the boots to buy food and later ran out of money again and Eddowes than left to visit her daughter.

However, it does indeed seem that some rules (or stories) were bent in this case.

Greetings,

Addy

[Phil Carter]

Hello again Iain,

In addition to my previous article, and with Simon Wood very kindly allowing me, I quote most of his article piece from jtr forums herewith below...

Where did Catherine Eddowes spend the night of September 28th 1888?

Here is part of the evidence from Eddowes' Inquest together with the relevant sections of a February 1891 report into "The Homeless Poor of London".

[Coroner] Where did you sleep?
[John Kelly]—"On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we were down at the hop-picking, and came back to London on Thursday. We had been unfortunate at the hop-picking, and had no money. On Thursday night we both slept in the [Shoe Lane] casual ward . . ."
[John Kelly]—"On the Friday I earned 6d at a job, and I said, "Here, Kate, you take 4d and go to the lodging-house and I will go to Mile End," but she said, "No, you go and have a bed and I will go to the casual ward," and she went. I saw her again on Saturday morning early."

[Coroner]—"At what time did you quit one another on Friday?"
[John Kelly]—"I cannot tell, but I think it would be about three or four in the afternoon."

[Coroner]—"What did she leave you for?"
[John Kelly]—"To go to Mile-end."

[Coroner]—"What for?"
[John Kelly]—"To get a night's shelter in the casual ward."

"The doors of the casual ward are usually opened in winter at about five, and in summer about six o'clock, and at most of these places, some time before the appointed hour, the casuals will be seen collected at the door waiting for admission.

"Admitted within the doors, each applicant for relief is in turn questioned as to his name, his age, occupation, where he slept the previous night and where he is going on departure. The particulars are recorded, and any further questions bearing on the fact of destitution may, if the superintendent thinks fit, be asked. Next the casual undergoes the ordeal of a search, and any money or other property found upon him is taken away.

"Articles other than money are restored to the casual on his departure; money may by order of the guardians be retained, but is in practice usually returned. If however the casual has as much as fourpence, admission is refused. When the search is completed the applicant is conducted to the bath. Here he strips, and his clothes are taken away to be 'baked' for the purpose of disinfecting them and destroying vermin. They are returned to him the following morning; in the meantime a clean night-shirt is given him."

[Coroner]—"When did you see her next morning?"
[John Kelly]—"About eight o'clock. I was surprised to see her so early . . ."

[Juryman]—"Is not eight o'clock a very early hour to be discharged from a casual ward?"
[John Kelly]—"I do not know."

[Juryman] There are some tasks - picking oakum - before you can be discharged."
[John Kelly]—"I know it was very early."

"On each day of his detention (Sundays excepted) the casual, unless in case of illness, does a task of work, which consists, in the case of men, of picking not more than four pounds of unbeaten or eight pounds of beaten oakum, or breaking not more than 13 cwt. [one hundredweight=112 pounds] of stones, while women usually pick two pounds of oakum, or else are employed in washing or scrubbing. The task of work is in no case an excessive one, and may usually be finished early in the afternoon, though the casual frequently dawdles over his work and makes it last on till five or six o'clock.

"In 1871 The Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act (34 and 35 Vic., cap. 108) provided that a casual pauper, who is defined to be a destitute wayfarer or wanderer, applying for relief, should not be entitled to discharge himself before 11 o'clock on the morning following his admission, nor before performing the task of work prescribed for him."

The Casual Poor Act 1882 amended the 1871 The Pauper Inmates Discharge. It stated that from henceforth "A casual pauper shall not be entitled to discharge himself from a casual ward before nine o'clock in the morning of the second day following his admission."

If Eddowes had stayed at the Mile End Casual Ward on the night of Friday 28th September, she would not have been discharged until 9.00 am on Sunday 30th September and thus missed her appointment with fate in Mitre Square.

John Kelly had a ready explanation. The Times, 5th October 1888, reported him as telling the Coroner that, "there had been some bother at the casual ward, and that that was why she had been turned out so soon. He did not know the regulations of the casual ward at Mile-end, and whether she could discharge herself when she liked."

But why would Eddowes have needed to stay at the casual ward on Friday night? She had pawned Kelly's boots that night for 2/6d, providing more than enough money for both she and Kelly to stay at their regular lodging house.

Now, not enough with the above, which Simon has provided extremely well, he points a finger further towards Kelly's dubious testimony...

[John Kelly]—"I think it was on Saturday morning that we pawned the boots."
[Mr. Crawford]—"Is it not the fact that the pawning took place on the Friday night?"
[John Kelly]—"I do not know. It was either Friday night or Saturday morning. I am all muddled up." (The tickets were produced, and were dated the 28th, Friday.)

An inquest juryman picked up on this discrepancy, the Evening News, 4th October 1888, reporting him as saying that "if the pawning took place on the Friday it rather upset the theory that the deceased had to go to the casual ward on the Friday night because they had not money for a lodging."

Simon then turns attention to the Pawnbroker's evidence, which helps us understand a great deal the events around the ticket...

Star, 1st October 1888—

"The articles pledged at Jones's, the pawnbroker, in Church-street, have been taken away by Detective-Inspector McWilliams, who has charge of the case. The pawnbroker states that the articles must have been pledged by a woman, as it is against the rule to receive goods from a man pledged in a woman's name."

Only a woman could have pawned John Kelly's boots. But was it Eddowes? And here we encounter yet a further flaw in John Kelly's story—

If on Friday 28th September Catherine Eddowes set off at "about three or four in the afternoon" to reach the Mile End Casual Ward, how could she have pawned Kelly's boots in Church Street, Whitechapel, that same night?

In an attempt to substantiate the story of Eddowes having spent the night there one theorist has proposed that the pawning actually took place on Saturday morning but the pawnbroker back-dated the ticket by a day, perhaps in order to earn more interest. This desperate attempt to have our evidential cake and eat it doesn't work, for the simple reason that pawnbrokers charged fixed rates of interest. On redemption of the boots [at any time within one calendar month from the date of the pledge] Joseph Jones of Church Street would have levied a penny in interest, plus a one half-penny fee for the pawn ticket. Pawnbrokers made the most profit from short-term pledges, so back-dating the pawn ticket by a single day wouldn't have earned Joseph Jones an extra half-penny interest until after 28th October. Also, if Kelly's boots might have fetched a good price if not redeemed the pawnbroker would not have had the legal right to sell them until twelve months and seven days after the date of the initial pledge.

Just in case anyone might be thinking that Joseph Jones of 31 Church Street was a shady character in the world of Whitechapel pawnbroking it is worth noting that between 1880 and 1889 he and his son made a total of five witness appearances at the Old Bailey, one on 19th November 1888 together with Sergeant Patrick Enright [J Division] in a case of theft.

Eddowes' whereabouts on the night before her death are crucial to our understanding of the double-event.

So where did she spend the night? Who pawned Kelly's boots? And why did John Kelly lie?

I again thank Simon for his kindness in allowing me to present his words here.

The point of all this is simple. If Kelly isn't a suspect, which he could well have been, he is certainly involved in lies. The question, as Simon says (pardon the pun Simon).. is why did Kelly lie? Put that together with shaky evidence of Kelly's coming's and goings on the evening before the murder, and one starts to wonder one clear thought...

What in blazes were the police up to by ignoring such contrary evidence?
Because if the police weren't doing their job properly...WHY NOT?

The evidence and manner of the Mitre Square murder are singular in the least. Could it be that Kelly was the man Eddowes met and was seen talking to, before the sojourn into Mitre Square? We have seen that the evidence of the lodging house keeper allows for Kelly not being at the lodging house. And more to the point...WHO EXACTLY WAS JOHN KELLY?
For we know nothing about this man, and like Hutchinson...completely disappears.
I wonder...

best wishes

Phil

[Iain Wilson]

The tall buildings along Bishopsgate would have provided shelter against the rain, something Lawende and friends were doing at that very same time.
Eddowes, no doubt, still under the influence, may have simply sheltered from the rain in the doorways and (Church) passageways when the Ripper approached her, or even the other way round.

Ironically, she may have even though it safer to keep to the main thoroughfares at that time of night.

A very fair point.

[Jon Guy]

A few observations :

Even without any money Eddowes could have joined John Kelly that night at the Lodging House. The Deputy Keeper, Wilkinson, stated at the inquest that he would have trusted them for a bed, I trust all lodgers I know.
She could have got in at that late time too.

If intending to return to Spitalfields upon release Eddowes may have taken the longer route simply due to the fact that was the route she was taken there.

The tall buildings along Bishopsgate would have provided shelter against the rain, something Lawende and friends were doing at that very same time.
Eddowes, no doubt, still under the influence, may have simply sheltered from the rain in the doorways and (Church) passageways when the Ripper approached her, or even the other way round.

Ironically, she may have even though it safer to keep to the main thoroughfares at that time of night.

[Varqm]

Hello Varqm,

Another coincidence between the two cases..MJK and Eddowes..

The name..Mary Ann Cox.

Mary Ann Cox, 5 Miller's Court estimated age from Court records is 31 in 1888. (b.ca 1857)

Any connection with this Mary Ann Cox perchance?

best wishes

Phil

Hi Phil,

No relation to the Miller Court's Mary Ann Cox. Wilkinson is a sort of interesting character to me. Sub

Varqm